Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The following is an experimental exquisite corpse writing. To produce it, I searched on the Internet to find the "most famous opening line of a novel." I found "Call me Ishmael" (Moby-Dick, Herman Melville, 1851). Then I searched to find what resulted from entering that line into a search. I clicked on each result and read until I felt I had found a sentence (or phrase, section, title, whatever) that was non-essay-like—an impotent phrase (something that could be read as a signifier to fit with any or all-such, so to say). If I felt this did not exist on the page, I moved on to the next. The sentences/phrases that were found to apply are stitched together in the following story.


Interior Design and Bookshelves
(sources follow)


Mocha Dick had dozens of harpoons from attacks by other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity. Some years ago I read an article about interior design and bookshelves. And it will upon you as well. In my mind’s eye the vision is clear: It is a warm summer weekend, late in the afternoon or maybe dusk. At the risk of offending my sister, I’m going to write about her cat, Jack. I Am Stop, You Are Go. His financial situation was poor and he was desperately in need of a publishing success. One minute it's the stubbly, hysterical laymen of Lebanon, shooting their rifles in the air, like children, that's the story we all wanna hear, beardy blokes, shouting at the camera, waving placards and then, the next, all Hell breaks loose on the Pacific Rim, Mother Nature clears her throat and the works of man - and his Holy StockMarkets - come tumbling down, washed away in a roaring tide of shit and corpses. All this bobbing and bouncing… it’s enough to make you sea-sick.

sources, in order, searched on 03/15/2011:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick
http://jeffsharlet.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Call-Me-Ishmael-Charles-Olson/dp/0801857317
http://www.uniwatchblog.com/2010/07/03/call-me-ishmael/
http://callmeishmael.org/
http://www.myspace.com/cmi
http://www.melville.org/hmmoby.htm
http://mrishmael.blogspot.com/
http://horsesass.org/?p=27177

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